Moving the Heart of God

"Put on sackcloth, you priests, and mourn; wail, you who minister before the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you who minister before my God; for the grain offerings and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God. Declare a holy fast; call a sacred assembly. Summon the elders and all who live in the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD."  Joel 1:13-14 (NIV)

 

How many of us can say that we weep and cry out to God for the souls of the lost, for the condition of our country? Not me, I am ashamed to say. Oswald J. Smith says that revival praying--prayer that moves the heart of God--is like giving birth: it doesn't happen without hard labor. As I read the accounts of great revival preachers, that is the one thing they all had in common. They labored long and hard in prayer, with powerful results. I want to pray like that. If the condition of our world breaks God's heart, shouldn't it break our hearts too? Can we really expect God to be moved by our brief and shallow petitions?